Wednesday, August 1, 2018

"As the metal straw makers scrambled to fill tens of thousands of preorders, scammers flooded Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba with cheap knockoffs"

Buzzfeed:
FinalStraw’s monthlong Kickstarter campaign launched in early April and surpassed its fundraising goal of $12,500 on the first day. By the campaign’s end, Cohen and Pepper received orders for about 86,000 straws at $20 apiece, raising nearly $2 million.

...

The FinalStraw knockoffs, some half the price of the real thing, appeared online within days of the end of the Kickstarter campaign, according to Cohen and Pepper, using their product name and photos. So far they have reported more than 200 listings on Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba that have used their photos and promotional text without permission. (It’s called “copyright infringement.”) FinalStraw has no listings of its own on these websites because the straw won’t be ready until November.